Welcome! This DMAC showcase project, "Journey," uses a website structure to takes viewers through an interactive trip past the DMAC 2025 audio and video created by Christal Seahorn. These two mini-projects set up the map extension project that expands on the video clip, and the page culminates with a video essay narrated by Seahorn's dog, Zoe. Zoe takes viewers on a personal and heartfelt journey through specific phases of her life.
Audio Project Description (Expand)
To hear an audio of me speaking the description below, click here.
The theme for my DMAC collection is “Journey.” This audio project is a micro-podcast that captures a moment of transition for my home institution with a conversation between two students at different ends of their college journeys. The University of Houston--Clear Lake (UHCL) was founded in 1974 as an upper-level (junior/senior-only) university. In 2014, it went through a "downward expansion" and accepted lower-division students for the first time. This mini-podcast {insert/ Diaz_Hughes_Story Core Interview_Feb_21_2018.mp3} is from a 2018 "Story Core" event in which that year's first-year students interviewed members of the inaugural 2014 freshmen class. The event was a play on NPR's StoryCorps series.
The audio begins with a 2-second sound to mark the transition to a new interview episode {insert/MarimbaWinF2}. Following the transition sound is my introduction to the episode/project {insert/ProjectIntro.mp3/}. As the introduction ends, a background track begins with a coffeeshop chatter {insert/coffeeshopchatter-51190.mp3}; these chatter is intended to recreate the background hum that was present on the day of the Story Core event because we had multiple tables going simultaneously of student/student interviews. This chatter plays in the background as the interview begins and continues to through the full interview. The full interview is 18-minutes long. I shorten it for this project by speeding the tempo to fast-forward 15 minutes of the interview, leaving a “chipmunk” sound to signal the fast-forward. The interview plays again for a final closing between the two students, and the episode ends with a soft piano sound meant to signal the finish of the track {insert/WarmPianoLogo.mp3/}.
Resources/Documents:
Intro Sound—{insert/MarimbaWinF2} Sound Effect by floraphonic from Pixabay
Background Sound— {insert/coffeeshopchatter-51190.mp3} Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay
Outro sound— {insert/WarmPianoLogo.mp3/} Sound Effect by Anastasia Chubarova from Pixabay
*All students signed release forms for their interviews to be shared and eventually added as an historical archive in UHCL’s Neumann Library collections.
Video Project Description (Expand)
To hear an audio of me speaking the description below, click here.
Video Project: The 47-second video above is a clip from the video introduction to my WRIT 3307: Advanced Writing class at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. There are 7 videos total, each introduces a skill/objective for the course. To encourage students to tour their city, I've filmed each mini-lesson at a different tourist sight in Houston, TX. This is consistent with my "Journey" theme for DMAC. Students can earn extra credit by watching and naming each location and writing a 3-paragraph essay on one of the locations.
Map: To illustrate the full Extra Credit assignment, I used the "My Maps" feature on Google Maps to create the interactive visual below. Each pin on the map is one of the tourist locations and include a thumbnail link to the skills/objectives video for that location. This map legend includes the sight names for DMAC participants, but the the link I give to students would omit the location names and only have the skill titles.
Resources/Documents:
Link to the GoogleMapsSitesCoordinates.csv file
Link to the full Extra Credit assignment document.
Intro video thumbnail attribution: User keithperkins on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
*Each YouTube video has been auto-captioned.
This is a video narrative from Zoe Seahorn, Christal's 10-year old pup. Zoe tells the story of how she was found and offers insight into her passions and challenges. Zoe was diagnosed with terminal bladder cancer in October 2024. She is currently undergoing chemotherapy treatment to try to extend her life, and some of her mom's colleagues, friends, and family have contributed to her vet bills via Zelle (seahorn76@yahoo.com) and Venmo (@profseahorn). Zoe creates art to thank everyone who donates to her treatment. This feature video shows Zoe creating some of her artwork. Thank you for viewing.